By: Susan Daluddung
Deputy City Manager, City of Peoria

Transportation planning options for our citizens has to be part of the plan right now for success well into the future. The manner in which we commute should mirror our lives. Whether it’s by necessity or choice – safe, affordable, reliable and cost-efficient transportation options should be at the top of every planner’s priority list. Transportation is an important building block in Peoria’s sustainability plan.

Bringing additional, and in some cases new, transportation options to the Valley comes down to three rather complex points: public demand, funding and political will. The most challenging of course is funding. Funding sources are scarce and conventional approaches no longer work. Although there are some options at the local level, some could argue that municipalities have trimmed and cut as much as possible and it is the responsibility of the federal government to provide additional transit funding and quickly. As for political will, decisions may need to be made today that in many cases may outlast the elected officials’ time in office. And finally,  citizens need to ask for what they want and be part of the process in order to provide their thoughts, opinions, ideas and most importantly their buy-in.

Peoria understands that fully integrated transportation is the backbone of a sustainable community and a sustainable economy. The city has been a very willing partner when discussions about transportation are taking place, either local or statewide. As a city, we understand there are additional needs for commuters in the Valley, and we understand that we need to do our part in providing a sustainable community that offers convenient access to housing, employment, schools and entertainment without the need of a car. We even understand that we need to be a partner in transportation projects that may not even be an immediate and direct impact to our community – because someday it will. Our focus has been on growing from suburban to more urban.

Peoria has focused particular attention on activity centers – for example, creating transit nodes, transit-oriented development and mixed-use connectivity in our planning perspective. By creating future transit districts for multi-modal activity such as buses, trains and bikes for commuters and shoppers, we are creating realistic solutions. At the same time, we know that we live in a desert city and we know that people value single family neighborhoods that provide the type of living famous in the Phoenix area. What we’re saying is, let’s have a sustainable plan that provides options that are thoroughly missing now. Currently there is only one development model to pick from in our West Valley, primarily the residential suburban style. Let’s provide other type of living options, for example, our plan for the Peoria Sports Complex. We are looking at an infill plan that has mixed-use housing, shopping and activity that you can walk to and participate in. Our thoughts are to build options for the future, so that people want to live here.

It’s a sustainable strategy – part of an overall plan. An example of how Peoria and other West Valley cities are engaging in long term planning is by visiting peer cities such as Salt Lake City, Utah, and evaluating their successful multi-modal transportation system led by Utah Transit Authority. Leaders and representatives from the Maricopa region recently paid a visit to gather information and understand the benefits of a fully integrated transportation system (bus, light rail and commuter rail). The trip proved to be such a success that another group will travel in June. This trip will drill down further in the complexities of their transportation system and give a bird’s eye view of what it takes to finish the job.

By: Tempe Mayor Hugh Hallman

Back in late 2007/early 2008, the city of Tempe watched as countless developments in the planning stages were shelved. The nation’s economy was not going to support the construction of new buildings. Unless a development was already significantly underway, the project did not get started.

Something special is happening in Tempe right now. This spring, the developments that had to be shelved are coming back like flowers that go dormant in the winter. Centerpoint Condominiums opened as West Sixth last year. That was just the beginning:

• Sotelo, a former condominium project that stopped construction after the completion of just one of its buildings, is now being finished as apartments.
• The Constellation/Lumina/Armory project at Fifth and College has changed hands and is now under construction as The HUB, student housing.
• The Farmer Arts District project opened last month as Encore – a senior living community.

Back in 2008, I said Tempe was poised to be the first Valley city to recover from the economic downturn. The buildings that were empty at that time were seen by critics as huge, looming symbols of our nation’s recession. But as the saying goes, some see crisis as a problem, others as an opportunity. We saw those vacant high-rise buildings as our future for new companies and new growth. The development plans that did not launch would give way to plans that fit the new economy – and that is happening now. After all, land doesn’t go bad and you can’t make more.

Today, Papago Gateway Center is 80 percent leased. Tempe Gateway is just over 40 percent leased, and there are several tenants circling the building that should probably hurry and sign because that space could be gone any day. We are nearly out of space for larger companies in the downtown.

Since 2008, we have welcomed Limelight Networks, Microsoft, First Solar, Bryan University and many other great companies. There is a reason these companies want to be here. This is the hub of vibrancy. This is where smart people get inspiration. As our economy heals, we continue to see growth in the heart of our city.

Hayden Ferry Lakeside is at 94-percent occupancy. Ryan Company and Sunbelt will break ground on the third Hayden Ferry Lakeside Towner at the end of this year and have the building open the end of the following year, if everything goes according to plan. This is a 10-story, 250,000-square-foot building located at what Urban Land Institute named one of the hottest intersections for development in Arizona.

It’s appropriate that our first high rise of this new development cycle will be located at Hayden Ferry Lakeside, where things began. Tempe Town Lake was not an immediate success. Its first year being open, it had fewer than 200,000 visitors. Today, that number is in the millions. Some of that is thanks to the world-class events, the boating, and the Tempe Center for the Arts. Much if it is because Hayden Ferry Lakeside created a sense of place. The development provided people who took ownership of the view outside their windows. Hayden Ferry Lakeside did more than provide our city with millions of dollars in economic impact – it created a destination.

It takes years to design and build new high rises. I encourage developers to step forward. We’re looking for the next pioneering group to create the next landmark development with us. Email us at business@tempe.gov or call 480 858-2059.

By: Iain Hamp
Community Affairs Representative, Wells Fargo

Recently, Valley Forward Association held its third annual Rio Salado Habitat Green Up volunteer event. Volunteers went out into the Rio Salado Restoration Habitat and picked up trash and debris to help bring out the natural beauty of this resource running through the heart of our community. It took partnership between the City of Phoenix, City of Tempe, the Nina Mason Pulliam Rio Salado Audubon Center, as well as Valley Forward and volunteers from several of its member agencies to make the weekend a success.

Service projects like this are happening more and more frequently throughout the greater Phoenix community. Throughout Arizona there are amazing community leaders everywhere you turn, each doing outstanding work to make a positive impact. Collaborative efforts between various municipalities, for-profit corporations, non-profit agencies, local business, and across all sectors are beginning the hard but necessary work of finding long term sustainable solutions for our community to thrive and prosper together.

For the last several months I have been focused on creating a stronger foundation, framework and set of resources for these kinds of collaborative service projects, through the formation of a Phoenix affiliate of ToolBank USA. A ToolBank in Phoenix would lend a massive inventory of tools (ladders, rakes, power tools and MUCH more) to local charities, schools and churches. Companies with corporate volunteer programs and the charitable organizations they support will no longer have to dedicate funding for tools, and the non-profits can in turn direct those dollars back towards their core mission to the community. A ToolBank can reach out to the numerous charitable organizations it loans tools to and connect service opportunities with those agencies and individuals seeking opportunities to make a positive, lasting impact – and equip everyone involved with the tools necessary to do so.

Events like the Rio Salado Restoration Habitat Green Up, organizations like Valley Forward and Arizona Forward, and initiatives like the creation of a Phoenix Community ToolBank are perfect examples of the impact we can make when we act together as one community towards a common purpose. We can each play a role in encouraging and participating in cross-sector collaborative efforts to increase the livability, sustainability and success of our state.

I hope you’ll join me in committing to do just that – find your own way to take collaborative action, challenge yourself to direct the network of individuals and organizations within your reach towards a commonly shared purpose. I strongly encourage you to post your own ideas for how we can come together to affect collective positive change in the comments section of this blog post.

By: Steve Krum
Director of Global Communications, First Solar, Inc.

On the way into work the other morning, the radio was breathlessly reporting on the high price of gas and a looming threat of $5/gallon. Sitting behind the wheel of my EV (electric vehicle), I allowed myself the smallest of smug smiles.  I haven’t bought a tank of gas since before Christmas, and I’d completely lost touch with stuff like that.

Not that there aren’t other “costs” associated with driving an EV. A full overnight charge in my garage starts me out each day with 100 miles of driving range, half of which is consumed by my commute to work and back. A little more than that if I take the highway – higher speeds, sudden acceleration, running heat or air conditioning all reduce effective range. But by cruising surface streets, accelerating gradually, coasting to maximize regenerative engine braking, and strategically planning my outings, I get by just fine.

These choices affect other behaviors as well.  Searching for direct routes from Point A to Point B, I am rediscovering neighborhoods that one misses when using major arterial streets or the loop. And that leads to a greater appreciation of the local community’s assets.

EV Charging Station at Desert Botanical Garden

For example, my office is about a mile from the Desert Botanical Garden, which has an EV charging station in their parking lot (P4, right by the entrance gate). Every now and then when I need a top-off charge, I’ll drive over on my lunch break, plug in, and spend the time wandering the paths or at the patio café.

Or take a recent afternoon when I wanted to meet up with friends for a happy hour get-together. My “Point A to Point B” plotting revealed El Chorro Lodge on the straight line home. The LEED-certified restaurant – which received a Valley Forward Environmental Excellence Award of Merit for historic preservation in 2010 – just installed four charging stations in their parking lot. It just doesn’t get much better than that!

Taz Loomans recently blogged here on our prevailing petrovore culture, and that got me to thinking about my own situation. Fundamentally, it is an exercise in mindful driving. When you don’t have the luxury of wandering around aimlessly, fulfilling a patriotic duty to consume as much gasoline as possible, you become much more aware of your driving choices. I’m not really logging fewer miles, and I’ve only once been worried about getting stranded miles from home dead in the water.  The point is, I consciously think about where I am going and why I need to drive there.

Look, EVs are not for everybody. Until next generation power storage technology provides greater cruising range, they may not be the most practical means of transportation for an automobile-based community. The Arizona EV Project administered locally by Ecotality is on a mission to install more public charging stations around town, and a $7,000 federal tax incentive for buying the car was a factor in my decision to join the nascent trend. There may not be a groundswell of EVs taking to the streets in “tipping point” numbers. But it’s a start.

By: Mick Dalrymple
ASU Global Institute of Sustainability
ASU Energize Phoenix Project Manager

We are never going to get to where we need to be by “focusing on the balance between economic development and environmental quality.” Many organizations, including Valley Forward, use some variation of this statement when discussing their mission. It’s time to evolve toward a new approach that can truly achieve sustainability: Alignment.

Historically, we have viewed there to be a trade-off between economic development and environmental protection. This mindset resulted from the pursuit of industrialization methods that exploited and degraded the environment as a means to drive growth. What we know now is that the real means to sustainable economic growth is to align economic activities with the natural environment.

As an analogy, think of the power harnessed in body surfing purely by aligning the body with a wave and letting nature overwhelmingly do the work. Now correlate that to the effort to harness wave energy for economic use, or, closer to home, to harness our abundant sunshine to build solar infrastructure and an industry base of solar manufacturing. A local solar economy cleans our air, keeps and grows money in the local economy, as well as enhances our national security. Think alone of the money diverted from buying imported fuel and, instead, injected into local labor. Then think of money earned from exporting solar components. The benefits multiply down the economic and environmental chain.

When we design our economic activity to align with nature, we create an output greater than the sum of our inputs. Consider the Oregon State University associate professor who observed mollusks successfully clinging to rocks while waves crashed against them. His team reverse-engineered their “glue” and developed a soy polymer-based version. Columbia Forest Products used it to replace formaldehyde adhesives in their wood products and became a supporter of public policies to phase out cancer-causing formaldehyde from wood products. Economic win. Environmental win. Health win.

The other day, the innovative beauty of the new Power Parasols in the parking lot of Sun Devil Stadium stunned me. They generate power, create shade for parking and for outdoor events, and provide for advertising revenue – all in what was an unbearably hot and ugly asphalt parking lot. Imagine the potential if we were to create a comprehensive plan (which could include Power Parasols as one of many strategies) to tackle the Urban Heat Island effect in downtown Phoenix: 1) reduced energy consumption for cooling, 2) a walkable downtown on summer nights, 3) local construction and retrofit jobs, 4) increased tourism, 5) iconic art, 7) a longer outdoor event season, 6) possibly increased rainfall downtown, and 7) reduced heat-related health problems… which brings up the third leg of sustainability: Equity.

Equity, or social justice, is usually the most short-changed component in sustainability conversations. But prosperity is not sustainable if it is not distributed and if the costs of human neglect pull down society. Our current economic system has resulted in our poorest citizens living in land left the most polluted by our prior industrialization era. We have grown our prison industry by leaps and bounds while (and possibly partly because) our education system stagnates and declines. Meanwhile, low-income home energy upgrades, among those offered through the Energize Phoenix program and city weatherization programs, reduce the monthly overhead of families while also reducing climate change emissions and reducing the need for costly new power plants. Win, win, win.

A sustainable economy is much like eating right, exercise and preventative medicine. It is much simpler, efficient and fulfilling than treating the symptoms of behavior that is not aligned with natural processes. So, it’s time to start re-thinking mission statements. How about “focusing on leveraging superior environmental quality for sustainable and equitable economic prosperity?”